Education Week - April 17, 2013 - 19

EDUCATION WEEK

APRIL 17, 2013

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

By Andrew Ujifusa
State lawmakers continue to
grapple with high-profile K-12 issues as legislative sessions approach
or cross the finish line nationwide.
School choice, school safety, and
education funding are prominent
among them.
No single issue dominated legislatures this year, although some
policy patterns have emerged.
Proponents of vouchers and tax
credits for private school tuition,
for example, have experienced a
largely uphill battle in statehouses.
Many states continue to sort out
details of complicated changes to
school finance, including a focus
on the needs of disadvantaged students and performance on tests.

The possibility of teacher pay
raises is also on the horizon in at
least two states.
And despite setbacks in two
Southern states for efforts to force
withdrawal from the Common Core
State Standards, bills that would
do so are alive in three states in the
Midwest.
All 50 states convened their legislatures this year.

‘Terrified of a Mouse’
Compared with the last two years
of statehouse activity, school choice
advocates have less to celebrate so
far in 2013, said Matthew Ladner,
the senior adviser for policy and
research at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a policy and
advocacy group based in Tallahassee, Fla., that supports vouchers.
One of the biggest setbacks for
choice proponents occurred in
Texas, where the House of Representatives voted 103-43 earlier this
month to effectively ban vouchers

and tax-credit scholarships. The
vote was a rebuke to Republicans
like Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Dan
Patrick, the chairman of his chamber’s education committee, who has
introduced a tax-credit-scholarship
bill and held a hearing on it last
week despite the House vote.
Mr. Ladner attributed the failure
of tax-credit scholarships and vouchers partly to rural districts’ decision
to frighten Texas House members
into believing that those measures
are a dire threat to those districts’ financial lifeblood, even as Texas public school enrollment steadily grows.
“They have pulled off a framing
of the issue that reminds me of the
cartoonish elephant that was terrified of a mouse,” he said.
The news hasn’t been entirely
dour for school choice: A tax-creditscholarship plan was approved in
Alabama after a brief but vigorous
court challenge.
But in Wisconsin, gop Gov. Scott
Walker’s push to expand the state’s
voucher program has run into resis-

Head Start Program
Culls Some Centers

tance from some of his Republican
allies in the legislature. And Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, another
Republican, withdrew his voucher
proposal this month.
Christina Brey, a spokesman
for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, a state teachers’
union with about 72,000 members,
ascribed much of the pushback
against vouchers in her state to
superintendents and school board
members and lauded their advocacy.

Sharp Contrast
In contrast to two years ago, when
Gov. Walker successfully pushed
to cut collective bargaining rights
for teachers as part of an effort to
slash the state budget, Ms. Brey
said, the conversation in Wisconsin
has turned to the state’s $1.3 billion
surplus.
“We’ve seen Senate gop leadership saying school funding to
public schools needs to be adPAGE 20 >

Bills Advance on School Security, Mental Health

Twenty-five of 125 lowperforming Head Start
providers that went through
a recompetition process to
maintain federal funding are
losing their entire service
areas, the federal office of Head
Start says—although the office
has yet to release the names of
those centers.
That’s because the U.S.
Department of Health and
Human Services, which oversees
Head Start, says it is still in
negotiations with potential
new grantees. Until those
negotiations are concluded, the
providers that are losing their
funding may end up having
a chance to recompete for a
piece of the $7.6 billion earlychildhood-education program.
The final list of new and
returning grantees will be
released in July, according to
the Head Start office.
Fourteen grantees, also as yet
unnamed, will see the money
they receive now split between
new and existing providers,
and 80 providers will continue
to receive their existing funds,
according to Head Start.
n

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty

By Nirvi Shah
The national discussion about
improving school safety evolving
from the shootings in Newtown,
Conn., reached a pivotal moment
last week, as the U.S. Senate began
consideration of a measure to
strengthen school building security,
and a Senate committee passed a
measure that would bolster schoolbased mental-health services.
Although Republican senators
threatened a filibuster to keep the
Senate from discussing the school
building security measure—part
of proposed legislation that deals
largely with the higher-profile
issue of gun control—compromises
reached behind the scenes nudged
the legislation onto the chamber’s
floor by the end of the week.
The deal that paved the way
for the Senate breakthrough centered on some aspects of the gun
bill regarding background checks
for buyers. It came on the heels of
plans for improving school safety
from the National Rifle Association and other groups, and followed President Barack Obama’s
proposals for new spending in his
budget to upgrade security, improve school climate, and boost
mental-health-care services for
students—similar ideas to those
he offered in January in response
to the Newtown shootings. But
those measures are likely to face
an uphill battle in a Congress
that has proved unfriendly to proposals that involve new spending.
(See related story, Page 1.)
Indeed, there was speculation
that the bipartisan mental-health

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POLICY
BRIEF

K-12 in Mix as State Legislatures Wrap Up
Safety, school choice,
education funding
among hot topics

Jillian Soto, left, whose
sister Vicki Soto was
one of the teachers
killed in the Newtown,
Conn., school shootings,
wipes away tears during
a press conference held
last week by Sen. Chris
Murphy, a Connecticut
Democrat. Several
families of Newtown
victims came to
Washington last week to
press the Senate to
begin debate on a
gun-control proposal.

measure, proposed jointly by Senate education committee Chairman Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, and ranking Republican
committee member Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, flew quickly
through its first committee discussion because it contains little in
the way of new spending.

shooting and killing himself. Questions have been raised about his
mental health and about that of
shooters in other episodes of violence. Schools have been declared
the front lines for early intervention and detection of mental illness.
At a town hall meeting about
gun violence that was hosted by
the National pta last week in Baltimore County, Md., U.S. Secretary
On the Front Lines
of Education Arne Duncan noted
The call for improvements to that lawmakers must address the
mental-health-care services has country’s mental-health-care sysgrown since the December shoot- tem as part of a comprehensive apings in Newtown, when a gunman proach to improving school safety.
killed 26 children and employees
“The vast majority [of those who
at Sandy Hook Elementary before
PAGE 21 >

In all, 160 prospective
providers are in negotiations to
cover the areas that were once
served by the 125 organizations.
In six cases, the current Head
Start grantee was the only one
that applied for the federal
money, but the federal reviewers
determined those programs
did not meet quality standards.
In those cases, the hhs plans
to reopen the competition this
spring, but allow those providers
to continue operating for the
time being.
Head Start announced in
2011 that some grant recipients
would have to recompete for
funding. Among them were
the Los Angeles County office
of education; the New Haven,
Conn., and Pittsburgh school
systems; and the city of Detroit.
The competition process
marked the first time in the
program’s 48-year history that
providers had been asked to
reapply for federal aid. The
government has always had
the authority to pull funds for
health and safety reasons, or
if there was evidence of fiscal
mismanagement. But in most
cases, the grants have been
automatically renewed.
Head Start is now moving
to a five-year grant process, so
that no provider will be getting
money in perpetuity without
a review, said George Sheldon,
the acting assistant secretary
for the federal administration
for children and families, in a
—CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS
press call.

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Education Week - April 17, 2013

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